Back in November I was very fortunate to hear from a friend with Inclusion Body Myositis about her consultation with a very eminent heart-surgeon-turned-dietician, Dr Stephen Gundry. Dr Gundry has a thriving practice in California where he sees many patients with a variety of health conditions, and has written two ‘diet’ books, the first being entitled Diet Evolution which was recently updated to the current Plant Paradox book. He became interested in nutrition whilst working as a cardiologist, having met one quite extraordinary, seriously ill patient who turned his health around purely by changing his diet. I’m not going to quote the whole book at you, because hopefully you will be interested enough to look at it for yourself, but it recounts his progression to working with patients with varying auto-immune conditions and achieving great results by modifying their diet and adding a few supplements. Dr Gundry carried out a full spectrum of blood tests for my friend, and his opinion was that by following his diet recommendations she could improve her health and regain muscle strength.
Now I have the greatest respect for this lady. She is a very practical, no-nonsense sort of person, and if there’d been a hint of hokum about him, she would have been onto it like a shot. But she felt he was genuine, and that was good enough for me. I bought the book. And it got me thinking about our modern-day way of eating, and it all started to fall into place.
Up until fairly recently, people normally lived out their lives in one geographical area, which had been home to their ancestors for probably several generations. People didn’t have the opportunity to travel, so they married someone from the same community, or one very close by. They ate food that was produced locally depending on what they could grow in the local soil, and meat from animals that ate more-or-less the same. There were no chemical fertilisers, they used the by-products of their livestock to feed their crops, and food was eaten fresh when in season. Over the generations, our bodies got used to the food sources, produced the right digestive bacteria to deal with those foods, and people were, in the main, pretty healthy. The water sources were generally clean and unpolluted, and there were no airplanes or cars polluting the atmosphere until fairly recently, and our human bodies could cope with the environment and the pace of life.
Then suddenly, and only in the last 40 or 50 years or so, travel and transportation became widespread. Food could be flown around the world to people who had never had the opportunity to eat it before, and people were able to relocate to a completely different part of the world, and eat the foods native to their new home. Gut bacteria, used to dealing with familiar substances for many generations, looked at the new foods they were suddenly expected to deal with and shrugged their shoulders. During this time, the food production industry gathered momentum, and fuelled by the supermarkets’ demand for cheap food, began to add chemicals and preservatives to our food to add to their profitability. Farmers began to increase their crop yield with chemical fertilisers and weed killers, which are absorbed by the plants we eventually eat, and remain in the soil. Fast food became popular, and over-fatty, over-sugary food became readily available – a regular part of our diet, instead of an occasional treat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising or pretending that my eating habits are any different. I’m just setting the stage.
At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry gathered momentum, offering financial incentives to our doctors to prescribe chemicals that we probably didn’t need, followed by several more chemicals to offset the side-effects of the original one. Even the drugs that are good for us, lifesavers sometimes, like antibiotics, steroids or painkillers, destroy the natural balance of our digestive systems and we lose the good bacteria that we rely on to digest our food, along with the bad bacteria that were making us ill. Adding to this chemical mix, none of us can avoid the increasing levels of air pollution and water pollution, so how on earth are our bodies supposed to cope? We spent thousands of years adapting to digesting clean, locally grown food, breathing clean air and drinking clean water, and then in less than two generations we’re eating substances that our bodies have never encountered before, breathing in car fumes and drinking water doesn’t even taste like water. Our modern lifestyles are hectic; stress, anxiety and depression are widespread; greed and discontentment are fuelled by media advertising from all directions.
Some of us cope well with these unfamiliar substances of course, but some of us don’t. You’ll know which of these groups you belong to. If you’re fit and well, you’re coping. If you’re ill, particularly with an auto-immune disease, then you’re not.
I have a theory that some of us are born with a pre-disposition to auto-immune disorders. Under ideal conditions, these diseases wouldn’t necessarily manifest, but nowadays who actually lives under ideal conditions? If you have that pre-disposition, I think it just takes a combination of a couple of trigger events to kick start an auto-immune reaction. These triggers could be severe or prolonged stress, a virus, a bout of food poisoning, a heart attack, an injury, a bereavement, a change of location, redundancy….. All these, and many other things, put our bodies under tremendous pressure, and sometimes the medications we are given to help us deal with them become a factor too.
Our gut is the largest organ in our immune system. It’s a fragile structure, with a lining just one cell thick in places, and partly covered in tiny villi (little fingers) that take the nutrients out of our gut contents and transport them to where they’re needed. Stress, illness, medications and poor food choices erode the lining of this fragile structure, and can cause the villi to die. We might not be getting proper nourishment from our food, and the undigested mess becomes home to unfriendly bacteria that wipe out the good bacteria that we rely on to keep us healthy. Even worse, some substances can leak out of a weakened gut and settle in places they were never meant to be, setting off a reaction in the immune system. The immune system is confused and begins to mistake our body’s own cells for more of these invaders, and an auto immune illness is born.
Ta Da!
So does knowing all this make any difference to our overall health? Unfortunately not, but it does give us the opportunity to decide whether it’s worth trying to do anything about it. If we have a disease (or several, in some cases) that is caused by our own body attacking its own cells, then it makes sense to me to start at the beginning, to look at how we can get rid of the unfriendly bacteria that is infesting our unhealthy gut, restore a good crop of friendly bacteria, and stop eating the substances that are creeping through microscopic gaps and holes in our gut wall into places they shouldn’t be, long enough for the gut wall to heal. If we’re sensible we will start eating foods that our bodies are able to deal with, by which I mean the foods that our ancestors ate as those are the ones our bodies are adapted to digest. If you’re really lucky, your ancestors will have existed on McDonalds, lasagne and chocolate cake, but mine didn’t so I had to think long and hard about the sacrifices I would have to make if I decided to go down this road. There are no half measures, you can’t have occasional ‘treats’ or days off or you’ll undo all the good work you’ve done so far. And it will take a long time before the gut can be fully healed, none of this is an overnight cure.
As I said at the beginning, if anybody can remember that far back, I was introduced to the Plant Paradox, but there are other similar eating plans including various Paleo diets and the AI diets which I’d been aware of before but discounted because you’re not allowed coffee. Having read and fully digested (!) Plant Paradox I decided that was the one I believed in. It identifies the main ‘baddies’ in our diet as lectins, it explains the science behind all its guidelines, it is backed up by videos and blog posts by Dr Gundry, and has a knowledgeable and helpful Facebook support group.
So – what are these lectins, and what they do to us?
Lectins affect everyone, but if you have an auto immune disease – maybe arthritis, diabetes, IBS, a thyroid condition, heart disease, cystitis, myositis, or if you are overweight, it’s useful to be aware of them because they are a direct cause of inflammation and autoimmune reactions in your body.
Lectins are a type of protein found in almost all plants including fruit, vegetables, pulses and grains, and the animals that eat them, including their meat, eggs and dairy produce.
Plants exist to reproduce. They have no interest in being eaten by us, or even by animals or insects. They don’t have the option of running away when they are under threat, so they became experts at protecting themselves and their babies with natural pesticides and repellents designed to paralyse, poison and/or kill their unfortunate predators. As far as plants are concerned, we’re just big insects and they are perfectly happy to poison us if it keeps us from eating them, so they’ve developed toxins and nerve agents specifically to discourage us.
Some don’t want to be eaten at all – like some types of kidney beans, which contain lectins that bind to our red blood cells and make them clot together, eventually causing death. Others only want to be eaten when their seeds are mature and ready to germinate if spread – think of the stomach ache an immature apple will give you, compared to the lovely experience of eating a ripe fruit. The lectins in beans and apples, and many other plants, will cause these acute, easily recognisable reactions, but most are more subtle. If we were insect-sized, we’d notice the effects straight away, but we’re bigger so we don’t notice much until the poisons build up over time. But even before we notice, the damage is being done.
Some can damage the lining of your gut, so that proteins from your food can invade parts of your body they were never meant to get to, and activate your immune system to attack them along with your own body cells. Once these lectins get into the bloodstream, they can potentially invade any part of our bodies.
Having read the book, I’ve now understand why potatoes make me ache, why gluten-free stuff makes me feel worse, why lentils and pumpkin seeds make me instantly violently sick (both ends) and why I always had stomach ache, and I’ve learned the difference between A1 and A2 cows and why bone broth isn’t necessarily good for you. And I can drink coffee and eat chocolate every day! I started following the guidelines in mid-November and learned as I went along. I’d say I’ve been doing it properly since 1st January, when I finally managed to give up my morning shortbread biscuit. I eat lovely food and I’ve lost 15 pounds without trying, and without being able to do any exercise.
But what about my auto-immune disease, I hear you ask. I wouldn’t expect to see any change in my condition for a long time yet because my gut is still healing. But I feel so much healthier, and my digestive issues and food sensitivities are a thing of the past. The weight loss has made it much easier to move around and seems to put less strain on my knees as they are nowhere near as painful as they were. My balance is improving and I can shuffle a few steps forwards or sideways without a walking aid, something I couldn’t do at all a few weeks ago. Life is easier, and nicer. But back to the point – IF I can repair my gut and stop giving my immune system anything foreign to react to, could I regain any of the muscle strength I’ve lost? Well, my friend asked Dr Gundry that question and he said that she could, because she still produces stem cells and her body will naturally repair itself.
I’m going to leave you with that thought, because I can’t improve on that.
A Guinea Pig's Tale 